Weaveworld Read Free Page A

Families had always called it, this wretched human world which she had endured for vengeance’s sake.
    But very soon now the chase would be over. Shadwell – the man on the bed – would profit by what they were so very close to finding, and she, seeing their quarry besmirched and sold into slavery, would be revenged. Then she would leave the Kingdom to its grimy ways, and happily.
    She turned her attentions back to the street. Shadwell was right. They had been led a dance. But the music would cease soon enough.
    From where Shadwell lay Immacolata’s silhouette was clear against the window. Not for the first time his thoughts turned to the problem of how he would sell this woman. It was a purely academic exercise, of course, but one that pressed his skills to their limits.
    He was by profession a salesman; that had been his business since his early adolescence. More than his business, his genius. He prided himself that there was nothing alive or dead he could not find a buyer for. In his time he had been a raw sugar merchant, a small arms salesman, a seller of dolls, dogs, life-insurance, salvation rags and lighting fixtures. He had trafficked in Lourdes water and hashish , in Chinese screens and patented cures for constipation. Amongst this parade of items there had of course been frauds and fakes aplenty, but nothing, nothing that he had not been able to foist upon the public sooner or later, either by seduction or intimidation.
    But she – Immacolata, the not quite woman he had shared his every waking moment with these past many years – she, he knew, would defy his talents as a salesman.
    For one, she was paradoxical, and the buying public hadlittle taste for that. They wanted their merchandise shorn of ambiguity: made simple and safe. She was not safe; oh, certainly not; not with her terrible rage and her still more terrible alleluias; nor was she simple. Beneath the incandescent beauty of her face, behind eyes that concealed centuries yet could be so immediate they drew blood, beneath the deep olive skin, the Jewess’ skin, there lay feelings that would blister the air if given vent.
    She was too much herself to be sold, he decided – not for the first time – and told himself to forget the exercise. It was one he could never hope to master; why should he torment himself with it?
    Immacolata turned away from the window.
    ‘Are you rested now?’ she asked him.
    ‘It was you wanted to get out of the sun,’ he reminded her. ‘I’m ready to start whenever you are. Though I haven’t a clue where we begin…’
    ‘That’s not so difficult,’ Immacolata said. ‘Remember what my sister prophesied? Events are close to crisis-point.’
    As she spoke, the shadows in the comer of the room stirred afresh, and Immacolata’s two dead sisters showed their ethereal skirts. Shadwell had never been easy in their presence, and they in their turn had always despised him. But the old one, the Hag, the Beldam, had skills as an oracle, no doubt of that. What she saw in the filth of her sister, the Magdalene’s after-birth, was usually proved correct.
    ‘The Fugue can’t stay hidden much longer,’ said Immacolata. ‘As soon as it’s moved it creates vibrations. It can’t help itself. So much life, pressed into such a hideway.’
    ‘And do you feel any of these … vibrations?’ said Shadwell, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and standing up.
    Immacolata shook her head. ‘No. Not yet. But we should be ready.’
    Shadwell picked up his jacket, and slipped it on. The lining shimmered, casting filaments of seduction across the room. By their momentary brightness he caught sight of the Magdalene and the Hag. The old woman covered her eyes against the spillage from the jacket, fearful of its power. The Magdalene didnot concern herself; her lids had long ago been sewn closed over sockets blind from birth.
    ‘When the movements begin it may take an hour or two to pin-point the location,’ said Immacolata.
    ‘An